New System, New Problem

[aliix]

rig: p4 3ghz

MSI 661FM3 mtherboard (mirco ATX)

2 x 256 DDR RAM

2 x IDE drives (80 + 20) - NTFC on both and already windows installation on one

Gforce 2 AGP

350 watt psu

 

problem: set the bios to boot from CDROM, with XP disc in. starts the setup from CDROM, then just before you get to the screen that gives you options it restarts the comp and then instead of starting again and reading from CDROM it does nothing. (blank screen and flashing white underline character)

 

possible solutions: faulty motherboard? other? HELP!

 

other info: using a win 98 cd i used "fdisk" to discover that neither of my partitions on the IDE's were being identified. is this because 98 can't read NTFC or my bios wont read my IDE drives???

 

but i can see when bios reads that it identifies the names of the IDE drives.

 

if someone could help me load win XP i would be very grateful. thanks!!

[LoArmistead]

I am having the EXACT same problem. I insert OS disc, nothing happens, black screen, white underscore. Thus far I am clueless as to what the problem be, but my best guess now is its the mobo, im using a crappy OEM microATX asus board...son to be replaced by maybe an ATi board

[CmpFreak88]

As far as I know... FDisk won't read an NTFS drive partition. I think I've had that happen once and all I had to do was reset the computer and it was fixed.

 

The only suggestion I have it to try and reset the CMOS and make sure your settings are correct...

 

Oh, is this a brand new hard drive? You may have to format it if it is. You can use fdisk to format it as a Fat32 drive and then when you start your XP setup you can delete the old partition(s) and reformat as NTFS.

[Mangar]

There is a program called KILLDISK this will wipe it clean then you can start over. This can be found at killdisk.com I believe. Sounds to me like you H/D is corrupt.

[aliix]

thanks for your replies.

 

well i'm answer in order of post replies;

 

LoArmistead: when it DOES boot and reads form CDROM it starts the XP setup succesfully but then before you get to choose to do some formatting it restarts with no explaination! then once it restarts it boots past the part where bios identifies HHDs the stops.. white flashing under score.

 

CmpFreak88: i've tried resetting CMOS. i will admit here.. it's my first P4 and motherboard.. so i dont know EXACTLY what settings i should have enabled/disabled. is there some crucial ones?? it doesnt seem to be to disimilar to AMD bios settings. but if you could let me know of any, then i'll check them.

 

CmpFreak88: it is not that new (only 4 months), but has run very successfully in an AMD rig. when SMART enabled it read as perfect.

 

Mangar: i'm really sure it is not the hard disk!

 

EXTRAS~ since my last post.....

1/ new error messages.. "CMOS checksum error defaults loaded"

this i believe is due to a weak or empty battery. i have changed the battery, i dont see this anymore.

 

2/ "Missing operating system" when trying to boot after attempting XP setup CDROM it occasionally says this

 

3/ "internal setup has occured, could not find a place for swap file" this happed when trying to install win98

 

so.. some positives..

1/put in a floopy drive, used a win98 boot disk, formatted 80gb hard drive. ran win98 setup very nearly sucessfully! untill i got loads of errors and illegal operations. like the ones you get when windows is actually running!! but this was the setup!! - says a lot about windows really..

 

well trying to keep a smile. but pretty fed-up. decided i am going to send it back the shop monday morning! but i'll carry out more work on it if anyone can suggest something!

 

thanks again!

 

 

EDIT:: problem solved. i guess persistence just payed off....

managed a half install of win98 but.. you wont believe this.. but (see the microsoft website for confirmation) win98 cannot support processors above 2.2 ghz!! LOL so it locked me out of windows.

 

i decided to try another format of the HDD and another go at the XP disc.. then as luck would have it, it worked..

 

i dont know officially how i managed to solve this problem. but i did replace the motherboard battery at one point.

 

well... 25th time lucky...

 

Edited August 28, 2005 by aliix